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FACTS 



IMPORTANT TO KNOW, 



RESPECTING 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 



THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT; 



IN A RELIGIOUS VIEW, 



FROM THE TEN OF 



J. 



J. J.'FLOURNOY 




f v 

J ATHENS: 

PRINTED AT THE "SOUTHERN BANNER" OFFICE. 

May, 1837. 



« 






FACTS IMPORTANT TO KNOW 



It is very true, but not, I lament, so highly esteemed among the 
generality of men, and especially among Doctors and they of the 
Bar, that the Holy Bible is from Jehovah — -a Beacon Light to show 
man how to escape " from the power of Satan to the power of God." 

There is, therefore, no excuse for Politicians and Statesmen to 
decline to frame Governments upon the Bible-model. Upon that 
model, men do frame States — but they neglect to acknowledge their 
obligation to the Lord, for the superior light of knowing right from 
wrong, on which a Government is based : and which distinguishes 
modern Bible-reading people in Governmental politics, from the 
erroneous and turbulent malevolence of ancient Carthage. Rome, 
Greece, Egypt, and Assyria. 

But, as I ha.ve said, men of eminence in public life, while they 
get great and precious advantages from the Bible, how to frame 
Constitutions and make laws for popular good, so sedulously refrain 
from acknowledging their gratitude for the boon of superior Reason, 
to the God of Heaven ! Lawyers, who have more than any other 
one society of men, to do with States, read Lyttleton, Coke, and 
Blackstone, without ever inquiring, whence these old English Jurists 
drew their own light for perfect law, or what enabled them to discard 
the errors, and adopt the truths out of the cumbrous customs of 
Greece, and Egypt, or the codes of Justinian, Papinian, Ulpian, Tri- 
bonian, Trajan, and other Roman Juris Consults ! In short, while 
the pious Lyttleton, and other English Chief Justices and Chancel- 
lors of piety, frame their legal lore from the spirit of the ten com- 
mandments and Christ's incomparable Sermon in the mount — 
the devoted, more modern followers of Lvttleton and Coke, take not 



4 

the same fountain head of wisdom for their guide, that was taken by 
their Magna Apollos of great Britain ! 

I lament, and more, I abhor greatly, this impiety in Lawyers and 
Doctors, the chief actors on the world's secular Drama ! I detest 
this trick of theirs against the Lord, whereby they generally use His 
Light, and never thank Him ! 

And so have they framed the Constitution of the United States ! ! 
Making most of the Light that came from on High, the Delegates 
in Convention, excluded the great essential saying of " In the name 
of God/' or " by His Mercies/' This exclusion was blasphemous 
— and gave the Elder Adams means to write to the Dey of Algiers, 
that our Government was not of the Christian Religion, or based 
on its precepts. Our Government is founded on the Christian mod- 
el, but we are ashamed to acknowledge the truth, or most of our Dele- 
gates were wilfully anti-Christian, in the age of the writings of 
Paine, Voltaire, Hume and Volney — the time about when the con- 
stitution was formed, and when the hearts of our eminent Leaders 
in politics were shaken on Christianity, by the Infidel Storm that 
scourged France and Europe, by elevating that monster of blood in- 
satiate, Napoleon Bonaparte. The vile spirit of the French Direc- 
tory, which was conjured up by the hideous figures of rhetorical 
falsehoods of the Infidels, and, which vile spirit germinated the man 
of blood in Europe, was the spirit that brushed the name of God most 
Holy out of our Constitution of Union ! 

And this constitution seems in the almost constant bickerings of 
our people, North and South, to be on a sickly and thorny bed, des- 
tined to fall. Yes, to fall and our people not to know the why and 
wherefore. Silly men ! the Jewish Nation, at one time the mightiest 
on Earth, and, that had still been the mightiest for good, had they 
but been constantly PIOUS, became so poor and weak, and all 
through an impious forgetfulness, similar to that which our consti- 
tution exhibits. 

For prosperity, America depends on no one statesman, or body of 
Politicians, alive, or to live. Without pure love to God, and his 
Christ — a humbling down to his will — and a framing of all Philo- 
sophic schemes, according to the Grand Plan of Good laid down in 
the Holv Book, the systems of no one will avail, since, then, it will 



be to neglect good, where one neglects Religion. To recede from 
Christ the centre and source of Good for the Earth, is to go back in- 
to heathenish follies. Governments, like individuals, will no more 
stand forever, than water run up hills, where Religion keeps not in 
the heart to purify it— and to direct the head to right thoughts, by 
pious feelings to obey the Most High. No wonder now that the peo- 
ple of the United States are so disputatious, and civil fights a famil- 
iar subject for conversation. We are not pious enough ! Money 
sways us too much to give our hearts to mammon. We are too 
proud, too ostentatious in finery, too novel reading, too fond of be- 
ing, where rich, over the poor, under the word " refined ;" and 
where poor to hate the wealthy — and, indeed, we consume so much 
of our time in harping on ourselves, as if we exceed all other Nations 
in perfections — that we do not listen with devotion, enough genuine, 
to the word of our Saviour. With a constitution, having the beast- 
ly stamp on it, of impiety, we are fondly dreaming ourselves favour- 
ed of Heaven, when and where, for this exclusion of God's name 
Most Holy from our General Charter of Rights, we do not merit His 
favour as a Nation, and scarcely so as individuals. But as God hath 
blessed us still and still, though we deny his name by a tacit indif- 
ference about it in our Constitution, or by not rectifying the errors 
of our fathers, in this particular, we are the more thqrefore to be 
thankful to him, and to be at once attendant to our duty in this case. 
by calling a convention, or amending the constitution, so as to admit 
our acknowledgement of our Creator, and our sense of his manifold 
mercies, and his Providence so profoundly Good. 

Men and Brethren : ere I conclude this essay of Love to you all, 
let me, tho' ever in your eyes, so insignificant, ask you to look abroad 
at the New England States. Happier people than they at home, 
can in our country no where be found. They have all of them ad- 
mitted their Lord God's name in their State Constitutions. And 
tho' they too, like the rest of the American People, have erred in their 
fierce struggle against the Aborigines, where Justice was politic, but 
wanting ; and mercy lost sight of on both sides — yet God in His 
Provident Goodness, seems to have forgiven them in the multiplicity 
of his blessings on that favored and tranquil region. They are a pious 
Assemblage of Freedom's sons, and peacefulness reigns with them. 



But on them too with us will God's displeasure come, if they too 
sit contented under a chief constitution, which looks as if it has a 
tincture of the spirit of Infidelity, and an alloy of the dark and sinful 
genius of the Egyptian magii — in the single wickedness of not seem- 
ing to know God and his Rule over nations and Empires. 

That since the Bible became the general sacred Book of mankind,, 
or since Christianity begun to be universally preached, there has 
been more Liberty in the world, than before Christ's advent, is an 
axiom of perfect and joyful indubitability. The high-toned liber- 
ties of Pagan Greece, before the Gospel's ministry, were but the lib- 
erties of Military despotisms, where men were entirely subject to 
warlike chieftains, though free on other things ; such as the Repub- 
lic of Sparta under the absolute supremacy of Lycurgus, and that of 
Athens under the regimes of a bloody Draco, and a wiser Solon. — 
But Christianity has beamed so much love and truth on mankind, 
and so much peace, that even England and France, though ruled by 
monarchy, are freer and better off than was every highboasted Re- 
public of Antiquity. Because better order reigns and better justice 
prevails, even in modern monarchies, under Christianity, than did 
there under antique Pagan Democracies ! But England shall have 
to doff her monarchy, and become a virtual Republic, before she 
comes up to the Gospel terms. This she may one day peacefully do 
— and not by war, since war often springs from infidelity, and have 
a Bonaparte and a Cromwell, unlike a Washington, too generally to 
spoil popular freedom for selfish greatness. As the Gospel prevails, 
and its Preachers mainly give up incessant interwranglings about 
the Creeds taught by St. Paul, and hold in patience and tranquillity, 
to the mild deeds enjoined on all of us by the Saviour himself, men 
will feel less disposition to rule and swagger, and find the heart move 
to do that justice and love, which He (Christ) inculcates — and which 
of course will usher in pure Liberty : — for Liberty means the doing 
of Good to all men : — and surely to act " towards others, as we would 
they should do unto us" — and to Love like Brothers, is the very 
meaning and substance of Liberty , itself, in her genuine attributes ; — 
devoid of king craft, and of licentiousness, two extremes that are 
her bane. In this sense is the original meaning of Libertia in the 
ancient Latin tongue. It means the acts of all men in one country 



doing just and forbearing to each other in that country. This is the 
genuine sense of the word Liberty : a sense in which few even of 
ancient warriors, and modern Politicians, seem to have comprehen- 
ded her : and in this sense the Gospel of Jesus Christ urges her upon 
the Earthj and makes it our duty to cherish her. For what king 
can obey Christ's plain injunctions, and still be a monarch, extorting 
taxes, and levying wars, to consume his brother men in battles with 
foreign nations, to whom also the duty of doing just and of forbear- 
ing, extends. Englishmen owe love equally to Frenchmen, as to 
their own countrymen. And, observe this fact — that Liberty which 
Americans enjoy, of letting one another alone in his Rights, they 
must extend too, to other people in other climes. The Liberty of 
doing Good, and power to keep, from harm, is the true Gospel free- 
dom, and the only one worthy of man's observance and obedience. — 
Thus we observe that Christ is Himself a Republican 
Teacher, and that no purer Liberty than what He enjoins 
on the world, can be found. Monarchs cannot be masters, 
where they strive to do to their subjects as they want their subjects 
to do to them ! ! ! They rule their brethren : do they want their 
brethren to rule them ? Certainly not ! How then can the King 
be obeying the Gospel ? He does not strictly obey it ! He rules 
his brothers — makes them vassals — takes away the natural freedom 
of Gospel Rights, from millions — amasses a public debt — and makes 
one part of his nation, the nobility, too proud to call the extreme poor, 
brothers : — and hence infuses, by this spirit of stern pride on the one 
hand, and of abject humility on the other, a train of vices in the body 
politic that but darkens the Gospel light ! Hence since monarchy 
is not smiled upon by Christianity — king craft is not Right ! — and 
since our Saviour enjoins every mild virtue upon us, and reprobates 
every vice, His Gospel is the centre and life of Human Liberty, which 
means Human Rights, Human Virtue, and Human Perfectness, in 
contradistinction to human wrongs, wars, and the tyranny of a 
crowned few, over the many. 

I now the more wonder at and lament the oversight of this Grand 
Truth in our Fathers of the Revolution — that while they were 
crowned with the triumph of Liberty, they have been in Convention 
so apparently ignorant of the spirit of the Gospel, as to neglect all 



8 

devout mention of the Great Giver of Life. Light, and Liberty to 
them ! ! It is a lamentable spectacle : and our General Magna 
Charta is not so perfect, as man, doing his duty to God, can make it. 
I deride and disdain all species of freedoms that be not based_ on Gos- 
pel principles, as wild License to the commission of iniquity, or. 
else some despotism with the name only of freedom. I pity and ab- 
hor that Statesman any where, who does not reverence the Gospel 
enough to show devotion to Religion even in his political speeches 
and doings. I too disdain the cries of the indifferent or unbelieving, 
about Hypocrisy, Enthusiasm, or Fanaticism, since even these cal- 
led enthusiasts are always often superior to their indifferent revilers 
in all virtues : — for David, and Daniel of Israel, were consummate En- 
thusiasts. How lamentable is it for us of the United States to see 
our ruling politicians, or would be rulers in matters civil, so foolish 
and vain — so irreligious and Earthly minded, as to talk seriously on 
national affairs, and devise systems and schemes, without a single 
allusion to the Almighty, from whom truly all perfection of systems 
and beings come. Hence it is that we see that instead of blessed 
productions, and gladdening matters, consummated, the cogitations 
and devices of our public men, generally degenerate to, and end in 
strife, and political and sometimes personal bickerings, and give food 
for the animosity and obloquy of a hundred news papers that set the 
multitude in an almost perpetual fever of excitement, about mere 
trashes, not worth disputing on. Popular infidelity is one cause of 
this unceasing wordy turmoil, and the domestic condition of the peo- 
ple another cause. Never except we honor virtuous and religious 
men, in contradistinction to mere disputatious Lawyers, and med- 
ling demagogues, shall we ever find that national tranquillity, 
which is our ultimatum of worldly happiness. Infidels will care 
little in power to brew civil wars — since as they recede from Good 
in neglecting Christ, they have no heart for peace, and are like the 
Devil, full bent on mischief. Religious and moral men, because they 
fear the Lord God, will be afraid to brew evil : and aiming for Par- 
adise hereafter, will not attempt to mar their chance for Heaven, 
by marring the felicity of their brothers on earth. If the Religious 
statesmen,"be also scrupulous moral Philosophers, they will make 
their countrymen the more happy ; as they will then know that our 
adorable Saviour, spoke pure liberty to the world, as He came to de- 
stroy the works of Satan ; and liberate us from the horrid bondage 
of the source of unhappiness. — Amen. 





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